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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAnyone remember Magdalene laundries?
Last edited Wed Aug 22, 2012, 10:53 AM - Edit history (1)
This was a big scandal in Ireland when they discovered these institutions. I think the last one was closed in 1993. And it wasn't just for the promiscius women but even those that were too flirty when boys or even abused or raped would end up at these asylums where they were to be corrected and returned to society.
Is this what the republican party wants of us women? I mean geez in the last 3 days it seems the GOP is turning into 'rape is such a beautiful thing if you can get pregnant' type ordeal and not one of these bastards actually give a rats ass about a woman who has been horribly violated.
Asylum records show that in the early history of the Magdalene movement, many women entered and left the institutions of their own accord, sometimes repeatedly. Lu Ann De Cunzo wrote in her book, Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; The Magdalene Society of Philadelphia, 1800-1850,[9] that the women in Philadelphia's asylum "sought a refuge and a respite from disease, the prison or almshouse, unhappy family situations, abusive men and dire economic circumstances." Though some may have taken refuge in the institutions, the asylum environment hosted behaviour considered[by whom?], to constitute physical, psychological, sexual and emotional abuse. Many women felt they needed the support of the institutions to survive, since the sisters strove to make them feel that the reasons for their refuge were their own fault.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)"The Handmaid's Tale".
get the red out
(13,466 posts)They want women in Church where they will learn to stay out of the men's way and take what ever abuse is coming to them.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)LynneSin
(95,337 posts)I mean the heydey of these operations were back in the 50s and earlier.
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)bad young people were treated.
CBHagman
(16,986 posts)A few years back The Washington Post religion page had an article about a woman who was consigned to a Magdalene institution in Ireland and separated from the child she'd borne out of wedlock. The story had a happy ending, for she was reunited with her grown daughter, but the decades of pain that preceded that were just unimaginable.
This is the recent past. This is the Western world.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)should of found understanding and love. But instead they found terror.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)There were a couple of scenes towards the end that I'll never be able to scrub out of my mind....
CBHagman
(16,986 posts)Consider where the 2012 version of the GOP stands:
1. They're in the process of approving a very strict anti-abortion plank to their platform -- constitutional amendment banning abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
2. They support employers who do not want health care plans to cover contraception.
3. They scorn federal government programs (except, for some reason, those with the Defense Department) and favor private charity, particularly faith-based.
4. Their favored radio talk show host (with a history of substance abuse himself) repeatedly vilified a law student who spoke in favor of the Affordable Care Act's contraception provisions.
I keep saying they want to take us back to 1973 Ireland, or Gilded Age America.
culchiewoman
(5 posts)I think they'd like to drag us back to the 14th c., if they could. That way raping and pillaging would just be a normal way of life as well. *Legitimate rape*
MADem
(135,425 posts)and never even realized such a thing still existed.
The GOP would probably LOVE this system. Cheap labor, no complaining, opportunities for perverse abuse.
What more could any sick asshole want?
culchiewoman
(5 posts)It was actually free (slave) labor, not cheap. These women weren't paid anything for the work they performed, and it wasn't all just laundry (although that was the hardest, most bone-crushing and dangerous work). Many women, like my mother, did intricate needlework and sewing on a commercial basis for the nuns. They'd make fancy embroidered linen tablecloths which the nuns then sold to the US tourist trade, to stores like Harrod's, etc. The women never saw a dime, nor did the nuns ever pay into a pension fund for them. They often died from exposure to harsh chemicals, cancers related to same, or from horrendous injuries working a mangle or press. Ireland passed its Anti-Slavery Act in 1930, so the religious orders (and State in its complicity) were in violation of this Act. In 2011, Justice for Magdalenes took its case to the UN Committee Against Torture and succeeded in getting an extremely harsh ruling from the committee against Ireland. Its statement was as follows: "The Committee is gravely concerned at the failure by the State party to protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined between 1922 and 1996 in the Magdalene Laundries, by failing to regulate their operations and inspect them, where it is alleged that physical, emotional abuses and other ill-treatment were committed amounting to breaches of the Convention. The Committee also expresses grave concern at the failure by the State party to institute prompt, independent and thorough investigation into the allegations of ill-treatment perpetrated on girls and women in the Magdalene Laundries. (articles 2, 12, 13, 14 and 16) The Committee recommends that the State party should institute prompt, independent, and thorough investigations into all allegations of torture, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that were allegedly committed in the Magdalene Laundries, and, in appropriate cases, prosecute and punish the perpetrators with penalties commensurate with the gravity of the offences committed, and ensure that all victims obtain redress and have an enforceable right to compensation including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible."
Yeah, the GOP would probably slather over slavery, torture and other degrading punishment meted out to women. Right up their alley.
MADem
(135,425 posts)"payment" for their labors...
culchiewoman
(5 posts)The last laundry to close on September 25, 1996 was at Sean MacDermott Street, Dublin. Not Waterford, although somehow that keeps popping up on the interwebs. The Good Shepherd Sisters did run a Laundry in Waterford, but it was closed by the 1960's and their land sold over to Waterford Institute of Technology. My mother attended the former industrial school, St Dominick's, on the grounds there.
Sean MacDermott Street was an extension of the High Park Convent Magdalene Laundry in Drumcondra, Dublin, run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. High Park had any number of enterprises and 'centers' operational on up through the 1990's. One of the more notable was An Grainan, a female juvenile 'training center'...Sinead O'Connor actually did time there; she remembers some kindness from a few nuns there (particularly one young one who gave her her first guitar), but said she also often encountered some of the aging former Magdalenes who were still living there in elder care, and how sad and destroyed these poor women were. The Sisters of OLC ran into some bad investment troubles in the late 1980's and were forced to sell off parcels from High Park. Unfortunately, one of those parcels contained the unmarked graves of 155 Magdalenes. Of the 155, only 133 death certificates were ever found and exhumation orders (to move the cremated remains to Glasnevin Cemetery) were only issued for 122 bodies. We still await a thorough investigation on this anomaly, and know there are unmarked graves at all of the other former Laundry complexes in Ireland as well as mother-baby homes. Many of these properties are now up for sale or lease as the RCC buckles under the weight of lawsuits, but we've not yet convinced relevant government departments to do complete soil-testing and identify and properly commemorate all of these graves.
MADem
(135,425 posts)The landing was in Waterford.
culchiewoman
(5 posts)Just to clarify, the scandal of the Magdalene Laundries (and the initial focus) was in the Republic of Ireland, not the UK. Although Magdalene asylums started in the UK and Ireland in the 18th c. under Protestant reformers, several RCC religious orders quickly seized on the benefit of the commercial aspect of the laundries and set up a model in the late 19th c. in Ireland that was far more punitive, long-term and far-reaching than the original Protestant models. The repercussions of these privately-run facilities (unlike Irish industrial schools, mother-and-baby homes and other residential institutions, the Laundries were neither inspected or regulated by the Irish State, although the State certainly remanded girls and women to them, through the courts system and from industrial schools) continue to this day, as many children born to women who experienced the Laundries (or were sent after their children were born) were adopted out, in Ireland as well as through an export scheme to the US that spanned the 1940's-1970's. I was one of those 'banished babies' and my mother spent 12 years in an industrial school, 10 years at the Magdalene Laundry in Sunday's Well, Cork and 2 years in the Cork mother-baby home where I was born.
In an ironic twist of fate, I also fell pregnant as a 17-yr old Catholic school senior in Philadelphia in 1977 and was also forced to relinquish my daughter. I am reunited with both my mother and daughter, thankfully, and work as an adoption rights advocate as well as co-founded Justice for Magdalenes, an advocacy group fighting for restorative justice and reparations for Magdalene survivors. The Philadelphia (where I live) Magdalene asylum, by the way, didn't close until the 1940's. Although like all other US, Canadian and UK laundries, it operated in a far less punitive fashion than the Irish Laundries. Much different model.
All of this unfortunately gives me an insider look at the current adoption industry and the war on women, and it isn't pretty. It isn't hard to connect the dots with the GOP/extreme right wing's manic efforts to control women's reproduction and any resulting offspring, and the current 'deficit' of healthy, white infants available for adoption. This once billion-dollar industry is under enormous strain and will do almost anything (including illegal child-trafficking from countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Vietnam, Cambodia, African nations and other vulnerable areas) to satisfy the insatiable demand for womb-fresh infants. During the "Baby Scoop Era" (post-WWII to the 1970's), there were plenty of relinquished infants to go around. No family would have their shamefully pregnant daughter raising their child! So the norm (as was the case for me in 1977) was to be sent off to a maternity home, quickly sign over your child (while still under the influence of mind- and mood-altering medications, hormonal influence, and post-partum depression). No mystery why Christo-fascist 'pregnancy crisis centers' are springing up near every Planned Parenthood or other women's health clinic...they desperately seek to coerce vulnerable, frightened young women into turning over their children for adoption. No woman should ever make an adoption plan while still pregnant. There are too many unknowns and mitigating factors -- high hormone levels leading to inability to make rational decisions (e.g. sign a relinquishment agreement), pressure from greedy adopters eager to claim the pre-born child as 'theirs', and agencies breathing/lying/cajoling down their necks to relinquish at all cost. And the cost is high...just ask anyone who's surrendered a child to adoption. Agencies will tell these women adoption 'guarantees a better life for their child.' Nothing could be further from the truth. It only guarantees a different life. Some may be better, but many are far worse. Money still trumps good, hard vetting of prospective adoptive parents, and unfortunately, too many paedophiles, abusers and just downright sick people have been given rights to some mother's child. People you wouldn't allow to adopt a goldfish much less a child.
And in the US (as is the case in Ireland), adult adopted people cannot access their original birth certificate in all but 6 states, a right enjoyed by even convicted felons. A right also enjoyed in the UK since 1976, Scotland since 1982 and many other more progressive-thinking nations.
So yes, if we don't want to see a return to Magdalene Laundries, baby-scooping and other female/human rights abuses, I suggest we all get to the polls in November!
For more information on the Magdalene Laundries and JFM's work, visit http://www.magdalenelaundries.com. For more information on US adoption history, reform and activism, visit http://www.bastards.org.
Oh, and please don't call these asshats "bastards". That just insults those of us who were truly born that way and are rather proud of our bastard status Or as I like to say, "I was born a bastard; what's your excuse?"
LynneSin
(95,337 posts)I knew there were variations of the laundries here in the states.
I can't imagine being a woman and having to go thru that ordeal on any level.
culchiewoman
(5 posts)The Magdalene theme/link popped up in my Google alerts (natch), so I had to come check it out. Great forum, and happy to clarify for anyone wanting to know more.
LynneSin
(95,337 posts)We're a progressive website to help elect democrats.
I remember first reading about the laundries in a book I was reading about Mary Magdeline. Seems poor Mary Magdeline was probably one of the most misunderstood women of the bible. Like the girls confimed to the Magdeline Asylums (I like how they've changed that term from laundry to asylum since asylum best defines just what was happening) it seems Mary Magdeline herself was not very well understood and labeled a whore by the church just so we could justify her existence.
As for DU we've been around since the day Bush took office. It's a fun place and a bit silly at times too.
CBHagman
(16,986 posts)Hm. Where have we seen that lately?
Raster
(20,998 posts)Thank you for sharing your experiences and insights. There's been a war on women for hundreds of years, and now the latest misogynists to participate are the republican party.
DURHAM D
(32,610 posts)I can't decide if I want to cry or break something, or both.
Your voice is needed and welcomed on DU.
panader0
(25,816 posts)Keep up the good work and thanks for the history lesson. My gramma on my dad's side is from Cork.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)Welcome to DU! The Magdelene Laundries history is timely. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it... seems as though we're staring down the rabbit hole again.
get the red out
(13,466 posts)Just evil. The Catholic Church is simply evil.
LynneSin
(95,337 posts)and yet from what I've read it's equally has horrifying. I don't think any of the victims of these Laundries have ever received any sort of compensation for the trauma they endured for years.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)and for all the information connecting these dots. Welcome to DU.
Yooperman
(592 posts)Words are really inadequate to convey my deepest and sincerest gratitude to you. You are a beacon of Light for this world for how you have overcome the challenges you have faced. Your words radiate wisdom and an understanding of this topic unlike I have ever read before.
I would like to personally welcome you to the Democratic Underground and it is my sincerest wish you continue to share with us your opinions and experiences.
I don't say this very often...
Bless you and your Loved ones.
You are making a difference.
Peace be with you...
YM
OneGrassRoot
(22,920 posts)I look forward to reading more of your posts. I'd never heard of Magdalene Laundries until this post. Thank you.
myrna minx
(22,772 posts)We're happy to have you here and I look forward to your contributions.
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)I am bookmarking your post. Thank you for sharing your insight.
prairierose
(2,145 posts)for sharing your story with us. This is a very important issue and for all those who think this could not happen again......think again. Exploiters have no shame and no conscience.
Welcome to DU. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
SalviaBlue
(2,917 posts)MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES LYRICSJoni Mitchell
Review The Song (2) Send "MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES" Ringtone to your Cell
I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries
Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridget got that belly
By her parish priest
We're trying to get things white as snow
All of us woe-begotten-daughters
In the steaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries
Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me--
Fallen women--
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery ...
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity?
Oh charity!
These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they'd know, and they'd drop those stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries
Peg O'Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you'd think at least some bells should ring!
One day I'm going to die here too
And they'll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring
No, not any spring
Not any spring
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)drm604
(16,230 posts)Thank you for posting this.
LynneSin
(95,337 posts)There is someone who has first hand experience with this that posted her thoughts about it. A very amazing read!
frogmarch
(12,154 posts)Magdalene Laundries":
I didn't know about the Magdalene Laundries until I heard the song a few years ago.